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Ethics

: Legal Ethics Forum

Blown statute of limitations for possible discipline of Professor Yoo?

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Wow.  (Nod to Volokh)



Perhaps the Pennsylvania bar will lack the ability to investigate and/or discipline Professor Yoo for his role in drafting the torture memos, because they have a four year statute of limitations.  (Yoo is licensed in Pennsylvania.)  But, because he practiced within the District of Columbia, he may have submitted himself to discipline there.  I'm still tracking that down, and looking for a statute of limitations in DC.


But, if the Pennsylvania and DC bars do lack power to impose discipline, it's yet another reason why the OPR at DOJ shouldn't draw any faux conclusions and why we should pass a statute to give DOJ continuing authority to impose discipline for acts conducted while at DOJ.



UPDATE:  In correspondence on a listserv and privately, It's been suggested that even if DC retained authority to discipline John Yoo, DC would likely use the substantive law of Pennsylvania -- possibly including the statute of limitations from Pennsylvania.  If so, amazing result.


It's also been suggested -- somewhat speculatively in my view -- that the DOJ's OPR slowed the report until the Bush administration was on the way out the door, because the authors wanted a more favorable climate internally before acting (i.e., an Obama administration).  If so, then the DOJ internally blew the statute for political reasons.  As I say, there's no firm proof of that.  


Part of that leak, from an article by Andrew McCarthy, suggests that former Attorney General Mukasey took the OPR to task for including extraneous materials and facts in their report.  If true, that would be an example of why I feel it's a bad idea to have a discipline authority write a report that they themselves wouldn't have to prosecute in an adversarial setting.  That's the "moral hazard" I mentioned in an earlier posting.

Full post as published by Legal Ethics Forum on May 07, 2009 (boomark / email).

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